The Cabin at the End of the World(60)
Eric opens his eyes, and the sheet covering Wen’s body is blackened with flies. They hover and they crawl over and weave between one another. Eric cries out and waves his arms frantically over her body. The flies ignore him. They are fat and drunk. They are greedy. They are cruel and fearless. They are the darkening knots and threads of her shroud.
Andrew says, “Eric! Eric? What are you doing?”
“I’m getting them off her. I want them off her.”
“Getting what off her?”
“The flies. They’re all over our baby.” The enginelike roar of their collective wings is deep and guttural, a growl that turns into derisive laughter. He would be willing to spend an eternity crushing the flies’ bodies, one by one, between his fingers, if it’ll keep them away from Wen.
“I don’t see any . . . hey, if you can’t lift her—”
“There’s just so many.”
“Are you sure you’re okay? How about you hold this thing and I’ll carry—”
“I’m fine. I can do this.”
Another voice worms into the cracks between the buzzing and Andrew and Eric’s conversation. Leonard says, “Eric, turn on the TV.” He says it twice. He says it like it’s nothing more than a hey-try-this friendly suggestion.
The television. It’s there on the wall in front of him. The black screen is not quite a mirror, but it reflects his face and the cabin behind him, filtering the images in dark, muted tones. There’s color in the reflection, but at the same time there’s not. The rope around Leonard is white, Andrew’s long hair is black, and the pooled blood is a black red, so opaque the floor appears to be full of holes.
“Eric, turn on the TV.” Leonard’s patient request sounds like his own thought verbalized. Yes, he could turn the TV on. It would take very little effort and would not prevent them from leaving. He could turn it on and see whatever it is they might see. Maybe it would be an answer. Maybe it would be nothing. He remembers yesterday’s tsunamis and the filmed drownings and devastation. He can’t remember what promised calamity is supposed to be next. What could he see that’s worse than what he’s already seen in the cabin? He remembers his shame and guilt while watching the rising ocean swallowing the Oregonian coastline and its denizens and fleetingly believing the four strangers were who they said they were. Does he believe them now? Does he believe it enough to turn on the television? What if the screen stays blank and dark? Would that mean it’s all over, that everything and everyone is gone? Would he be relieved? What if the screen flashes on and bathes the cabin in light? What if the void isn’t darkness, but is instead a sea of burning, unrelenting, unforgiving light?
Andrew shouts at Leonard, only inches from his face. He tells him to shut up and he doesn’t give a fuck about the TV.
Leonard says, “Just turn it on, please. We have to know if we stopped it, or if we didn’t,” and he says it as though there’s only him and Eric in the room, using the minimum amount of volume to be heard, to be understood.
Eric says, “We’re leaving now,” but he doesn’t move to pick up Wen.
Andrew says, “Eric? You’re not listening to him, are you? Hey, are you all right? Maybe you should sit down for a minute.”
One fly lands on the TV screen’s lower right corner and crawls in looping, sideways eights. Eric says, “We’re going to leave right now,” or maybe he doesn’t and only thinks it. He reaches out and the fly guides his hand to the power button on the inside edge of the almost invisible plastic frame. The button is hidden and half the size of his finger pad. He presses it.
After a second or two delay, a confusing, bracing collage of colors and images fills the screen to its borders, accompanied by the sound of an authority, a narrator talking offscreen. Eric squints and is initially unable to focus on what’s happening: the scrolling text banners with blurry words and numbers, images changing from overhead shots of an airport to a hospital with doctors wearing hazmat-esque shields and gowns, crowded sidewalks, bustling markets, and packed-beyond-capacity subways, many of the people wearing surgical masks over their noses and mouths, and quick cuts to iconic images of a metropolitan city Eric would normally recognize instantly. He succumbs to the withering onslaught of sight and sound and slinks away from the TV and the couch, and he bumps into Andrew.
Andrew puts a hand on Eric’s shoulder and turns him so they face each other. He asks, “Why’d you do that?” and he gives Eric a confused look of betrayal.
Eric doesn’t recall deciding or deliberating whether to turn the television on or not. He says, “There was a fly . . .”
“A what?”
“We’re going. I’ll get Wen,” Eric says. His voice is a decayed echo.
Leonard cries out. “We didn’t stop it! We didn’t stop anything! We’re another step closer to the end.”
Andrew says, “Shut up,” but there isn’t much oomph behind it. His head is turned slightly to the television, giving it the same distrustful side glance he gave Eric.
Leonard sniffles and coughs and shouts between deep, shuddering breaths. “Remember, I told you yesterday. Oceans would rise and drown cities—which happened, you can’t deny that, you saw it—and I said then a plague would descend—”
Eric interrupts and says, “Then you said the skies will fall and crash to earth like pieces of glass and then a final everlasting darkness.” He didn’t plan on reciting that doomed litany, just like he did not plan to turn on the television.